Facebook adding Instant Messaging

For recruitiers on Facebook its getting even easier to connect with candidates. According to the ReadWriteWeb blog:

Facebook Chat will be slowly rolled out this week. The announcement, made via The Facebook Blog, says that the rollout will be slow, but, unlike MySpaceIM, there won’t be anything for you to install when it arrives in your profile – you’ll just have a new “Chat Bar” at the bottom of your browser. On the one hand, Facebook needed to launch chat in order to compete with the News Corp giant, but on the other, we have to wonder, do we need another IM?

Facebook IM takes a page out of Gmail’s GTalk, mimicking the way that browser-based IM functions – it even offers a way to pop-out your conversation window, so you can continue browsing Facebook without losing track of your chat session.

In addition to the pop-out feature, Facebook chat, like any IM program, lets you appear “offline” if you don’t want to chat. The conversations are private, and the chat sessions history is saved from page to page and between login sessions, but not permanently. You can also clear the chat history at any time using a provided link in the conversation window to do so.

Live chat is something every company should be integrating into their own corporate career sites. Facebook’s announcement will now let you try it out for those employers who are establishing a presence on the social network. Use it to answer prospective candidates questions about your company. Its just another tool in the Facebook recruiting toolbox.